Arcade OS or other Booting MAME Front End

[creepfactory]

Is there a way to install JUST like Arcade OS on a pc? Like DOS and then arcadeos can be set to start on startup? Or what is the best thing for this? Then you would have to run dos only versions, so no MAME32 right? But the upshot is near instant on to play arcade games! Has anyone dones something like this for their cabs?

[rampy]

sure... lots of people do that... especially those who built their cabinets using arcade monitors (prior to andy's new uber video card)...

I boot to dos and have gamelauncher come up automagically... It's not instant, as there's the bios screen and a few DOS drivers that load, but it's reasonably fast...

Rampy

PS are you the tablecade guy, btw? just curious...

[creepfactory]

Thanks! Yes I am the Tablecade Guy btw. Tablecade is up but kind of like Keywiz I am polishing up the site and streamlining the building of the Tablecades, and looking into getting bigger investors in the project. ALso I will be taking an ad out in EGM soon! So watch for it. There has been a great response to Tablecade, as people love to have an authentic all in one experience, but don't have room for a full size cab. I really do play mine every day next to my computer I am using right now, in fact, it IS the same computer, I have dual monitor support and can run Mame at the same time on the tablecade, so then it doesn't even need PC guts in it, but the LX is the stand alone tablecade if that's what people want.
James

[rick6668]

I have my cab set up this way.

I actually boot to DOS and run a menu which lets me select either ArcadeOS or Windows.

Player1 start runs ArcadeOS and P2 runs windows.

I use windows for connecting my cab to my network for easy file transfer and run a Jukebox program.

I also changed the startup window from windows 98 to a nice animated jif of MAME.

Rick

[creepfactory]

Boy WindowsXP sucks for puttign in an arcade cab! There is no dos prompt option!

[)p(]

Boy WindowsXP sucks for puttign in an arcade cab! There is no dos prompt option!

why? you can change the boot screens and it loads pretty fast...

and with hybernating you can get almost instant play...one of the reasons i am switching to xp soon on my cab...

no dos prompt in xp, but a command prompt yes  

peter

[JayTea]

    I use Windows 98 and then I load up ArcadeFX. I still add my .mp3's and play around with my graphics editor too much to not have a standard OS. I use Arcade FX much like an application instead of a standalone OS - but once loaded, it is an arcade operating system.  So, the best of both worlds - But, that's my preference.  Everyone is different...

[killr0y]

The one thing I don't like about DOS is it wastes so much of a modern PC's resources.  No USB support, not a lot of graphics support, limited networking support, limited sound drivers, etc.  

If I had an old Pentium or PII, I'd use DOS.  But today's PC hardware is so fast now that you aren't going to squeeze any real extra performance out of using a small footprint OS like DOS.   Now, if someone came out with a REAL MAME-specific OS where it took full advantage of USB, Networking, & multimedia hardware, that would be awesome.

I just don't see anyone wasting their time doing this just for MAME.  I was thinking of using Win98se for my new cab, and I'll probably wind up doing that.  However, if I have any issues I'm just going to throw XP on it.  

See, alot of people still believe that XP, 98, & Windows in general just rob too many resources from the PC.  The truth is, DOS doesn't take advantage of half the available resources because everything has been optimized for 32-bit.

I wish someone would perform some benchmarks with the various flavors of MAME on the various OS's.. this would be very helpful to everyone when deciding which way to go.

I'm too lazy and/or busy to do this but maybe someone out there will step up to the challenge  

[eightbit]

Boy WindowsXP sucks for puttign in an arcade cab! There is no dos prompt option!

There actually is a command line option which is dos prompt. Why would you want it though? You can even load DOS first and then load XP and it will set up a multi boot menu for you. The question is why would you want to?

Creep you need to get out a little your stuck in the past with DOS blinders on.

[creepfactory]

What are you all on crack, it is totally agreed that Xp is a HUGE resource hog. So you need a super fast pc t omake up for it and about 500 megs ram. I am not stuck on dos, and it does seem that Mame is heading to a windows only setup, but at least in the recent past mame DID run better in dos with the speed of computer used. Maybe they are using all the multithreading features of a true 64 bit os, but XP isn't a true 64 bit os. OSX is, but who has a billion dollars for a mac, and I would never consider a mac for a cab.

[)p(]

What are you all on crack, it is totally agreed that Xp is a HUGE resource hog. So you need a super fast pc t omake up for it and about 500 megs ram. I am not stuck on dos, and it does seem that Mame is heading to a windows only setup, but at least in the recent past mame DID run better in dos with the speed of computer used. Maybe they are using all the multithreading features of a true 64 bit os, but XP isn't a true 64 bit os. OSX is, but who has a billion dollars for a mac, and I would never consider a mac for a cab.

No we are not   or...ahum
On modern systems mame runs actually better under xp then under dos especially for the more modern games that need the most resources...

peter

[creepfactory]

Hey Pete its james, I always was told by the hardcore arcade cab makers that DOS is the way to go for a pure mame experience, I guess times have changed!
he he

[)p(]

Hey Pete its james, I always was told by the hardcore arcade cab makers that DOS is the way to go for a pure mame experience, I guess times have changed!
he he

yup I myself was very surprised how well mame  performance under xp. You can also tweak it a lot for use on a cab by disabling a lot of the processes in the background that are not needed. But from my experience it works great out of the box...only my ww spinner that does not work with xp because there is no driver for it has been the reason I have not upgraded from win 9x to it on my cab...

peter

[Howard_Casto]

I won't use anything but windows xp for any projects anymore.  It's rock solid stable and has a minimal footprint for today's standards.  

As it's been said above, dos sucks for any halfway modern pc due to the fact that the last version of dos came out way before the 1 gig processor, 80 gig harddrive or 1 gig ram stick.  

[eightbit]

What are you all on crack, it is totally agreed that Xp is a HUGE resource hog. So you need a super fast pc t omake up for it and about 500 megs ram. I am not stuck on dos, and it does seem that Mame is heading to a windows only setup, but at least in the recent past mame DID run better in dos with the speed of computer used. Maybe they are using all the multithreading features of a true 64 bit os, but XP isn't a true 64 bit os. OSX is, but who has a billion dollars for a mac, and I would never consider a mac for a cab.

This has been discussed, debated, argued about, and fought over here many times. At least once a week this exact question comes up. Some of the old die hards have a hard time changing their opinion about the suitability of DOS for modern hardware. XP is a resource hog but DOS can't take advantage of all the resources or devices available. When runing XP you'll still have more resources left after the overhead of XP than what DOS or even Win98 can address.

Plus mame is being developed and optimized under Windows.